Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Hurricane Sandy and climate change: from complacency to panic

According to James Schlesinger, human beings have only two modes of operation: complacency and panic. This is a fitting description of our attitude towards climate change. So far, we have been in "complacency mode", ignoring the problem. Major disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy, may push us from complacency to panic. In this case, we may enter a condition of full "survival mode" and forget about the ultimate causes of what is happening. (Image from Bloomberg)

Hurricane Sandy struck New York just a few months after the dramatic melting of the Arctic Sea ice of this summer. The melting hardly made a ripple in the news, but it didn't pass unnoticed. It generated a strong sense of urgency that appeared as a more aggressive stance when Sandy struck. Whereas in other occasions scientists had been very cautious in linking specific events to climate change, this time it was different. That, in turn, affected the media and the front cover of Bloomberg Businessweek, with the sentence "It is global warming, stupid," represents a real turning point in this attitude.

So, today we are seeing an attempt to build up a communication strategy that could bring climate change to the top of our perceived priorities. In this sense, Sandy may be considered as the tool that could bring us there. But is it going to work? On this point, Andy Revkin published a note with the title "Why Climate Disasters Might Not Boost Public Engagement On Climate Change."

Revkin cites at length a text by George Marshall, an expert in climate communication. The gist of Marshall's position is that disasters tend to generate an immediate reaction where people tend to develop attitudes such as social cohesion, community values, and reciprocal help. In other words, people go into "survival mode," and they have no time to dedicate to understanding the ultimate reasons of what is happening to them. Indeed, there is no evidence that people struck by climate related disasters such as droughts, heat waves, floods, and the like have made the connection between these events and climate change.

That basically confirms what James Schlesinger said about the "two modes of operation" of human beings: complacency and panic. If we are in "complacency mode," we don't care about preventing possible disasters. If we are in "panic mode", we have no time to dedicate to preventing disasters, either.

If this is the way things stand, we have a big problem: if climate disasters are rare, people will remain in complacency mode and will not connect the dots. On the other hand, if climate disasters become very frequent, people will go in panic mode and will have no time to connect dots.

So, Hurricane Sandy is unlikely to be the magic tool that brings climate change to the top of the world's priorities. Nevertheless, it offers us a window of opportunity, at least if we will not be stricken by a sequence of disasters so rapid that there won't be time to think about what's happening. Right now, when the emergency phase
is over, there is time to stop and think
about the reasons of the disaster. If we do that, we might have a chance to find a precarious equilibrium in between complacency and panic: we can put climate change back at the top of the world's priorities.

Hello! This is Ugo Bardi - I tend to overextend myself on the Web by writing a lot of stuff. Presently, my blog in English is titled "Cassandra's Legacy". In English, I have another blog a little more esoteric, titled Chimeras. The first is dedicated to sustainability, the second to mythology, history, and art. See also my latest book, "The Seneca Effect," Springer 2017.

Seems to me the only valid policy with respect to climate change is people also being aware of peak oil and moving tax revenus taken on work towards fossile fuels or raw materials in general volume based taxes, and maintaining/setting up rather high level of redistribution, if the thing isn't crashing already ...

With the last IEA report, the propaganda is really getting quite strong ...But would say quite a bit now, with an unbalance on peak oil side (although a much simpler concept), to me its a communication mistake to have put almost all the weight on climate change (even if a tremendous issue as well, I'm not a skeptic at all), but basically because these are two aspects of the same thing.And when volume based gas tax have been set up in Europe after the first oil shock, we were not talking CO2, but the results are there : Europe per capita oil consumption around half of US one.Cheers,Yves

yes, the propaganda is terrible, but unfortunately getting stronger, as new shale gas is discovered in US under Santa Barbara, 4-times bigger than Bakken:http://www.businessinsider.com/shale-oil-field-santa-barbara-bigger-than-bakken-2012-11

Exactly, PO and CC are two sides of the same coin - exponential growth and denial of evnironmental limits.

In defence of US (I never thought I would write it): the country is much bigger than Europe and travel distances much larger - fuel car efficiency is just terrible, I agree. At the same time, most of Europe has no oil resources. My country is 100 % dependent on Russia, so is the case for many other countries...

Its very difficult to survive in Hurricane Sandy, I hope know things are normal to all people, still if you facing problem of shortage of drugs or other essential supplies. You can contact canadiandrugsaver hurricane sandy relief page (offering medicines to relief agencies)- http://www.canadiandrugsaver.com/charity-and-aid-org/hurricane-sandy-relief_523.html

Ugo Bardi's blog

This blog deals with the future of humankind in view of such things as the overexploitation of natural resourecs and the effects of global warming. It is a bit catastrophistic, I know, but, after all, the ancient prophetess, Cassandra (above in a painting by Evelyn de Morgan) turned out to have been right!

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Listen! for no more the presage of my soul, Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil; But as the morning wind blows clear the east,More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.(Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

The Seneca Effect

The Seneca Effect: is this what our future looks like?

Chimeras: another blog by UB

Another blog by Ugo Bardi; it is dedicated to art, myths, literature, and history with a special attention to ancient monsters and deities.

Rules of the blog

I try to publish at least a post every week, typically on Mondays, but additional posts often appear on different days. Comments are moderated: no insults, no hate, no trolls. You may reproduce my posts as you like, citing the source is appreciated!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(whirlything)unifi.it